Special Interest Groups Requests Records from Boating Accident

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is requesting to see the records of a Montana boating accident in 2009 involving U.S. Representative Denny Rehberg, according to the Missoulian. The accident occurred at Flathead Lake, and the group suspects the records may contain information that the public has a right to know concerning the “honesty, integrity and judgment of its elected officials.”

Law enforcement officials suspected the driver of the boat, former Senator Greg Barkus, was intoxicated at the time of the accident. Rehberg was a passenger on the boat. He plead guilty to reckless endangerment in 2011 and received a $29,000 fine.

A district judge in Montana ruled that the state must respond to the request and release the records. Chris Bond, a campaign spokesman for Rehberg, claims Rehberg was simply a witness to the incident, and that CREW is biased against Republican representatives.

Bond describes CREW as a “front group for Washington Democrats,” and the fact that it waited until just before an election to request the records “shows that this is much more about their liberal political agenda than it is about anything else.”

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